There's long been a lot of people tangentially involved in the hobby who don't actually play. I was painfully shy in HS and subscribed to the Dragon magazine and dreamed up stuff for YEARS after I lost touch with my middle school group. I've also noticed that how much I play and how much I post on forums are inversely related. When my kids were young and I couldn't play regularly I'd spend most of my subway commutes writing homebrew rules, setting stuff and longwinded forum posts. Now that I have a regular weekly group I barely check in with online game chatting.

That's not necessarily a bad thing as these kinds of people help RPG gaming be a thing people have at least heard of. They're only really a problem when they post enough online to collectively become taste setters (big problem with Storygames and places like The Gaming Den) and drive sales towards products that read well instead of play well (hello there adventure paths). Having them hang out in youtube channels seems pretty harmless.

Quote from: Haffrung;1049645If most of the player base want PC death off the table, they should revise the game to account for that preference. But it would be a fundamental change to the mechanics. D&D was designed from the ground up as a game where PC death is the fail condition.

In effect, people are retooling the mechanics when they that. It is still common enough. Personally I keep character death on the table. But if anyone thinks large sections of the hobby are not playing with some kind of plot immunity or greatly reduced lethality (I.e. taking death off the table unless someone does something stupid) they are living in a cave.

While PC death is a reality, I think many people are deliberately ignoring that fact that spells to bring back the dead have existed in D&D since day one.  When a character died and the party had enough money, you went to the Temple of Law (or whatever) and had him raised. Hell, in OD&D, a cleric only had to be 7th level to cast it.

This is really one of the revisionist strains of the OSR that I don't like, the absurd idea that back in the day it was gritty, grimdark, fantasy Viet Nam, where characters constantly died so there was no character development, just a meat grinder. But that's not the case, otherwise there wouldn't have been the back section of Rogue's Gallery.

Pundy's right.  He's absolutely 100% right.  These people losing their shit about the character dying?  They aren't gamers.  Fuck them.

Quote from: JeremyR;1049665While PC death is a reality, I think many people are deliberately ignoring that fact that spells to bring back the dead have existed in D&D since day one.  When a character died and the party had enough money, you went to the Temple of Law (or whatever) and had him raised. Hell, in OD&D, a cleric only had to be 7th level to cast it.

This is really one of the revisionist strains of the OSR that I don't like, the absurd idea that back in the day it was gritty, grimdark, fantasy Viet Nam, where characters constantly died so there was no character development, just a meat grinder. But that's not the case, otherwise there wouldn't have been the back section of Rogue's Gallery.

Yeah, it says in the 1E DMG that character death should "likely be no great matter".  If you had the cash, or were willing to complete a quest, and only died of HP loss (as opposed to the more gnarly special attacks that degraded/destroyed the body) then anyone who wanted to keep their character could. (edit - presuming they could return to a cleric in time)

That was why certain monsters that killed you in a way that ruined your corpse were feared more.

Quote from: EOTB;1049668Yeah, it says in the 1E DMG that character death should "likely be no great matter".  If you had the cash, or were willing to complete a quest, and only died of HP loss (as opposed to the more gnarly special attacks that degraded/destroyed the body) then anyone who wanted to keep their character could. (edit - presuming they could return to a cleric in time)

That was why certain monsters that killed you in a way that ruined your corpse were feared more.

New players fear character death.  Smart players fear level drain.

Yes.  Don't eff around with unanticipated undead.  Get away, plan, and come prepared.

Quote from: EOTB;1049677Yes.  Don't eff around with unanticipated undead.  Get away, plan, and come prepared.

READY YOUR WEAPONS BROTHERS, WE DESCEND UPON THEM WITH FIRE! (and holy water)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1049676New players fear character death.  Smart players fear level drain.

Why?  Level Drain just means you have to spend more work at getting back to the level you were at.  Or you end up dead.  Oh look, it's the same thing.

Oh look, it's not the same thing.  Level drain to 0 level means good bye forever (save for a wish)  to the character, since it is now a wight/wraith/specter/vampire/ whatever and thus cannot be raised from the dead*, or resurrected.  Oh, and as an added bonus, the newly created undead gets to attack its former party members, which are conveniently nearby.  And it drains levels too.

There are other major reasons to fear level drain, but the above is the the foremost.

IIRC, throwing a Raise Dead on some level draining undead actually destroyed them.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1049693Why?  Level Drain just means you have to spend more work at getting back to the level you were at.  Or you end up dead.  Oh look, it's the same thing.

It wasn't work getting it to whatever level I was at, it was fun.  It will be fun getting it back there and beyond.

I don't worry about level changes because what I want out of my investment is a playing in cool adventures; I've played enough at all level tiers.

Quote from: Franky;1049694Oh look, it's not the same thing.  Level drain to 0 level means good bye forever (save for a wish)  to the character, since it is now a wight/wraith/specter/vampire/ whatever and thus cannot be raised from the dead*, or resurrected.  Oh, and as an added bonus, the newly created undead gets to attack its former party members, which are conveniently nearby.  And it drains levels too.

There are other major reasons to fear level drain, but the above is the the foremost.

IIRC, throwing a Raise Dead on some level draining undead actually destroyed them.

Level drained to zero means the character is dead.  A character hit to zero hit points (depending on the edition) also means the character is dead.  Most players don't do the resurrect thing, in my anecdotal experience.  They just wander away from the table bored for the next couple of hours while the rest of the party carries on.  Or they make a new character and try to fit back into the party.

Dead is still dead, no matter how you end up there.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1049570To be fair, I have seen gamers (even playing D&D specifically) that bitch & moan about character deaths. Usually reserved for PC deaths, but I've even seen a few of them do this when certain NPCs are killed. These may not be the players you want in your game, but they are playing and thus are gamers by any definition.

Except that this has nothing to do with the situation I'm talking about in the video. This wasn't the actors on the show, it was the viewers, the fans, who are clearly fans of the show, not of the game.

These people are NOT playing, and are thus not gamers.

Quote from: The Exploited.;1049578Good vid mate...

To be honest, I've only heard about critical roll recently... I checked out one session and felt ill. WTF are all those insipid players doing? Screaming, shouting, hugging and high-fiving. Who actually games like that FFS?

No one. Not even them. They're all pro ACTORS, and they are ACTING.

Quote from: Gabriel2;1049601Meh.  I'll try to give it a watch later.

In all honesty, I'm dreading the production value.  The last video I checked out was landscape, but it was also a sustained shakeycam shot of two of Pundit's books on a desk.  Pundit, if you insist on this format for the visual portion of your productions, then please stabilize what you're using for a camera (presumably a cellphone at this point).

This one is probably 'shakeycam' again. But as I mention in the video, someone crowdfunded me the cost of a stand, so you'll see that as of this weekend's episode of Inappropriate Characters.